The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Director:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Charles Hoffman (screenplay)
Vera Caspary (story)

Release Date:

23 March 1953 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

A telephone operator ends up drunk and at the mercy of a cad in his apartment. The next morning she wakes up with a hangover and the terrible fear she may be a murderess.

Plot Keywords:

Letter | Telephone | Telephone Operator | Newspaper | Birthday

Cast

Anne Baxter	...	Norah Larkin
Richard Conte	...	Casey Mayo
Ann Sothern	...	Crystal Carpenter
Raymond Burr	...	Harry Prebble
Jeff Donnell	...	Sally Ellis
Richard Erdman	...	Al
George Reeves	...	Police Capt. Sam Haynes
Ruth Storey	...	Rose Miller
Ray Walker	...	Homer
Nat 'King' Cole	...	Himself

Runtime:

Germany:88 min | USA:90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Norway:16 | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #16317) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Blue Gardenia Productions

Trivia:

While the record album of the "Tristan and Isolde" music is never shown close enough to the camera for the movie audience to see it, it either is, or has been created to resemble, a typical 78-RPM album set of the 1940's of an RCA Victor recording featuring Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The cover art greatly resembles that of a 78-RPM album pressing featuring Toscanini conducting that orchestra. Toscanini was considered the greatest conductor of that era.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: Perhaps unaware that his hands on the keyboard are visible in the mirror behind him, Nat 'King' Cole plays a strikingly different piano arrangement of "Blue Gardenia" than the one we are hearing.

Quotes:

Casey Mayo: [on the phone] If you want your picture on the paper, you'll have to go out and kill somebody first.

Soundtrack:

Blue Gardenia

Cinderella Murder

In The Blue Gardenia, Anne Baxter's feeling low and depressed because her GI fiancé in Korea has given her the brushoff. Against her better judgment she goes out with Raymond Burr, full time artist and full time wolf. A few Polynesian Pearl Divers in the local bar which might have been spiked and Anne's not doing so good. But good enough to hit Burr with a fireplace poker and somehow make her way home like Cinderella with both shoes missing.

George Reeves taking a break from Superman plays the Los Angeles homicide detective gets a little unwanted help from Richard Conte, a Walter Winchell like newspaper columnist who's no doubt thinking of the black dahlia murders in LA a few years because a Blue Gardenia's been left at the crime scene and Nat King Cole both sang it live and on record in the film.

In the meantime Baxter's mood swings are being noticed by her roommates Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell. And Conte's got his own investigation going into the Blue Gardenia murder. It all makes for one interesting and murky film in the tradition of Fritz Lang.

Anne in a sense does a reprise of her Oscar winning performance from The Razor's Edge as a woman being trapped in tragedy. She blamed herself for her family's death in The Razor's Edge and she may or may not have killed Burr. The only difference is that an arrest might lead to an expiation of sin of a sort.

Fritz Lang made a specialty in harassed and harried protagonists getting themselves into some real jackpots whether it was Henry Fonda in You'll Only Live Once, Edward G. Robinson in Scarlett Street and The Woman In the Window, and we can even count Peter Lorre in M. These are people who in fact were guilty. For the first time however Lang's harried protagonist is a woman and Anne gives a great performance.

One scene I really loved is one with Almira Sessions as a brain dead housekeeper who finds Burr's body and then proceeds to clean up the crime scene. After all as she explains to Reeves this is her job and what she's paid to do. The fact she's destroyed all forensic evidence doesn't seem to impress her in the slightest.

On the other hand had she done like a normal person would have and not touched anything, the forensics would have cleared the whole thing up and we wouldn't have a movie.